When the next morning she knew that it was Mercy Philbrick, the poet, in whose lifeless presence she had stood, she exclaimed with a burst of tears, "Oh, I might have known that there was some subtile bond which made me kiss her! I have always loved her verses so." On the day after Lizzy Hunter returned from Mercy's funeral, Stephen White called at her house and asked to speak to her.

She had almost forgotten his existence, though she knew that he was living in the Jacobs house.
Their paths never crossed, and Lizzy had long ago forgotten her passing suspicion of Mercy's regard for him.

The haggard and bowed man who met her now was so unlike the Stephen White she recollected, that Lizzy involuntarily exclaimed.

Stephen took no notice of her exclamation.
"No, thank you, I will not sit down," he said, as with almost solicitude in her face she offered him a chair.

"I merely wish to give you something of"-- he hesitated--"Mrs.Philbrick's." He drew from his breast a small package of papers, yellow, creased, old.
He unfolded one of these and handed it to Lizzy, saying,-- "This is a sonnet of hers which has never been printed.